Spirit

I don’t know much about the things of spirit,
though each year the numbers
of my personal dead
keep swelling.

These days, when I try to talk
to my upright, sober, dead father,
I never fail to remember
that first Covid funeral – beautiful, harrowing –
six months ago now, in the first summer of lockdown.

Only the ghost of connection
there between us, but
we sat in the presence of pure sorrow
at a life that was suddenly gone; pure joy
at the full life that had been. There was much talk of God
and of carousing into the small hours, until

I could not tell such things apart
in the general intoxication.

“We must stop crying now,”
someone said, in tears, at the very end.
“Sam would have said: the brandy’s waiting.”

That’s when I knew, all the way
along my blood and into my bones:
I’m still a beginner in the things of spirit.
The only speech I truly know
is with the living, still,
though my father’s voice speaks through mine, uninvited;
though the ashes of dogs remain in their urns on the desk.

Always again I choose
that long draught that burns my throat –
while there is anything left on this side
to celebrate or savour.

 - Jacques Coetzee

die janfiskaal 

die janfiskaal bly loer deur
die ruigtes van my verse totdat
hy 'n paar onwaaksame krieke van
my woorde plattrek
en hulle doodluiters oor
die doringdraad van
my tong
hang

 - Lara Kirsten

Train journey

        i.

The Warsaw railway station
is grey-clean, in the modern style,
with electronic announcements
and flickering changes on the sign-boards.

Here, a sparrow hops her two-legged way
then flits up to the by-me-unseen rafters
of her life,

recalling the bird in Bede’s history
winging through the mead hall,

then out into the darkness
beyond light and time –

for us it is time to find
our platform for Krakow.


        ii.

She runs with large strides
that her bum emphasizes,

down the platform, step by step,
late for something;

then she, looking harassed;
and he in his suit, fast striding:

slaves to the time of capital,
never early enough.


        iii.

Was there, in the hard days,
such hurry?

Did guards with guns
own time,

each slow
moment?


        iv.

A lone cattle truck
stands still

at Auschwitz-Birkenau,
the train lines coming

through the brick-arched gate
to this terminus.


        v.

Lost at the Krakow station,
you rush to find the tickets to Warsaw;

I, flustered amongst languages,
seek our platform,

telling a young woman
– she speaks a little English –

that I don’t know where to go
for Warsaw; barely know where I am.

“You,” she asserts carefully,
“are in Krakow, Poland”.

We laugh at absurdity. She walks
from my life. Then you, Cape mossie

flitting through the foreign crowd,
come gleefully, flapping tickets.

 - Brian Walter

die lag

buite die grense van my kop
verby die bastion van my skedel
ander kant die filter van my vel
is 'n sosio-medies-politiese wêreld
met so baie verbeeldingsryke kaalgatkonings
so veel blinde aasvoël-en-heyna aanhangers
en altyd die waarheidsoekende harlekyne
wat meer sukses het as die yogis
om lug in mense se longe te kry
dit is nie geld wat die wêreld tans red nie
dit is die lag

 - Lara Kirsten